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[Nirur Torir]

Riv can't believe it not butter dead! Riv happy Riv get kill more stuff now.

[Solifuge]

Chapter 1-4:
Welcome to the Jungle

Spoiler: Current Party (click to show/hide)

Lassiter, Bounty Hunter
Riv, Savage Warrior
Cormac, Mercenary Soldier
Kelvyn, Wild Shaman
Nero, Highborn Pyromancer
Tylee, Death Priestess

What sky is visible beyond the dense, leafy canopy shines brightly, as Lassiter stirs from his rest inside a leaf-covered lean-to shelter. Kelvyn and Riv had built them after last night's battle, to keep them hidden while they rested. They and Nero now share a cheerless breakfast of hardtack and water, watching while Tylee kneels by a half-naked Cormac, checking over the wound she had cleaned and sewn up the night prior. She dabs at the stitching with a damp rag. Cormac winces.

Ah, Lassiter. You're finally up.
Aye. I feel like I've been asleep forever.
I know the feeling. After a fight like that, I could've slept for a year or so- oww!
*snickering* What's wrong? Is the little lady being too rough with you?
If she doesn't watch herself, she's liable to open the wound again.
Oh come now, Cormac, Death's Guardian has given you her pardon. Stomach wounds are often fatal, yet I see no sign of infection... you'll live.
Sure I'll live, so long as you're done practicing needlework on my gut!

After taking down camp, gathering what usefull equipment the goblin patrol carried, and leaving the rest with their corpses in a wet ditch, the party forges on through the shaded forest. Soon the trail begins to slope downhill, into a reed and fern-covered marsh, with muddy pools dotting the ground. Buzzing insects swarm in the moist air while the songs of birds fade behind them, replaced by the sharp cries and low thrumming of stranger creatures. Countless eyes watch from the forest, as the party reaches a tangle of mossy vines that mark the edge of a clearing. One by one, Kelvyn's scimitar cuts through them with sharp snaps, and they emerge into a loosely forested clearing. The remains of an old stone tower rises above the treeline ahead, marking the abandoned Moathouse they had left to find. A narrow isthmus of fern-covered land stretches before them, surrounded on either side by large black ponds.



Well, this looks like the Moathouse. A cheersome place, it is.
*breathing deeply* Nothin' quite like the wet stink of a marsh, eh? Do mind your steps though. These look like ponds, but they could be deep enough to swallow the lot o' us.
Aye, and if there are bandits like the folk in Hommlet say, we best not let them know we're visiting. Everyone stay close and quiet. Riv, no charging off ahead with another battlecry, agreed?
*grunts*
You never have been a talkative sort, have you Riv?
No.
*softly* ...he ain't the only thing what's quiet, Lassiter. You hear that sound?
What sound?
That's just my meanin'. Whole marsh's gone quiet.

Indeed, silence has fallen over the marsh, broken only by the soft buzzing and distant chirping of insects. It hangs heavily in the air for a long moment, before a loud splash and a great spray of water breaks it. A great green lump crowned by two glossy gold eyes rises from the water, it's warty bulk swelling for a moment as it lets out a low and thunderous croak. Soon after, more splashes are heard from all around, as a knot of giant frogs burst from the murky water, and lurch toward the bank and their prey.



Gods above and below, they're as big as horses... big enough to make a snack of us!
Don't worry, Nero. Even if one swallows you, you just have to cut your way out of his gullet!
What?!
Don't tease the boy. Besides, it should be simple. Most creatures are rather... frail on the inside.
That's not entirely reassuring!
We've not got time for reassurance, boy. Stand together, weapons out!

The band stands in a ring as the frogs approach, readying themselves for combat. Kelvyn brings his sap-stained blade down on the frogs warty hide, but it finds no purchase. Almost effortlessly, the frog snatches his right side up in it's jaws, sword arm and all, and shakes him around. Serrated teeth slice through his tattered hide armor and into the flesh beneath, and the dwarf cries out in pain. Steeling himself, Kelvyn grips his Scimitar from within the frog's mouth, and with all his strength thrusts upward. A wet crunch is heard, and the frog collapses, the bloodied dwarf falling from its jaws. Lassiter runs to his aid, helping him to his feet with a reassuring grin.

Frail on the inside, indeed!

Tylee and Cormac pair off, fencing a frog in with feints, and striking it a few solid blows before it goes down. Nevertheless, two more frogs approach from the deep waters ahead, undeterred. One reaches the bank, tenses, and with a tremendous leap sails over Cormac and Tylee, only to land before Nero. The sorcerer drops his crossbow with a start, a loaded bolt firing off into the water with a splash. Drawing his quarterstaff and holding it like a club, he swats at the frog hard enough to keep it from opening it's mouth, though it does little more than annoy the creature.

Help, I don't have a sword! It's going to eat me, and I don't have a sword!
That staff is useless if you use it like that. At least go for his eyes!
Eyes... eyes, of course! *Solis! Caecus!*

A flare of brilliant light shoots from the tip of Nero's staff with a fizzing pop, and strikes the frog's eyes, as it hisses and shuts them. Lassiter vaults over the leg of a fallen frog, and squares himself up to strike.

There, he's practically blind. Now stick him!

As they fight, the last frog remains back in the water, opening its mouth wide, and spitting it's pink tongue out like a dart. With a wet thock, it sticks solidly to Riv's armor, and begins to tug him forward. The man plants his feet firmly and struggles against it with all his strength, but is still pulled toward the water's edge.



Riv!
No good... can't pull free!
Cut it! Cut the tongue!

With a shout, Riv brings his axe down on the frog's tongue, and it snaps like a tether. Without wasting a moment, he follows up with an upward sweep of his greataxe, and the wounded frog falls into the water with a splash.

Ha ha, that's the way! Hope you all like eating frog's legs, because we've found ourselves a right bounty of 'em!

[Hawkfrost]

Posting to watch.
Very nice writing I may add.

[Solifuge]

Thanks! I have a really bad habit of adding adjectives to everything, and over-embellishing my descriptions. It works well for fantasy fiction, sure, but one of the big reasons I'm writing the Let's Play like this is to catch my bad habits, and finding a happy medium when writing descriptive prose... I want to immerse people, without vomiting an entire photo album at them every time anything happens.

[Lysabild]

Thanks! I have a really bad habit of adding adjectives to everything, and over-embellishing my descriptions. It works well for fantasy fiction, sure, but one of the big reasons I'm writing the Let's Play like this is to catch my bad habits, and finding a happy medium when writing descriptive prose... I want to immerse people, without vomiting an entire photo album at them every time anything happens.

Colors are preferable to black and white

[nenjin]

So I got inspired by this thread to go pick the game up.

Oh...my....gawd.....mah.....balls....

This has to be the most unforgiving D&D-esqe game I've ever played. I love it. Personally I loathe 3rd edition + DnD.....but with the Ciricle of 8 Mod, it's so close to the table top I almost can't stay angry at the system. The combat system is simply amazing given how many people have tried to emulate D&D group combat and failed to.

There's no way I could play this on Iron Man though. I just cleared the first floor of the Moat House, savescumming like crazy, and it still took 5 trips back and forth to town, and about a week laid up healing, just to get that far. Reminds me of the good ol' table top days. "We go to the dungeon!" "Your first encounter is with a pack of trolls! "Yeeearrrrrrggghhh, we beat the trolls and retreat to town for a month to recover from troll bites!"

[Solifuge]

Isn't it great, though? The built-in story may be generic and bland, and the fights may be frequent and grueling... but it does capture that Old-School tabletop game feel so very well. I've never seen a better implementation of D&D in VG form, to be honest.

Anyway, I'm having too much fun turning this hokey-arse fantasy plot into an even more ridiculously mawkish tale, with prose so purple you'd thought it was dying of oxygen deprivation. I'd like to do a better job with the characters, but I'm pretty happy with how corny it's coming out so far. I feel like a regular R.A. Salvatore!

It's slow going, though. If I'm going to get through this in anything less than another year, I either need to start skimming battles, or skipping over some in favor of focusing on the more interesting ones. There is simply too much fighting going on.

[nenjin]

Isn't it great, though? The built-in story may be generic and bland, and the fights may be frequent and grueling... but it does capture that Old-School tabletop game feel so very well. I've never seen a better implementation of D&D in VG form, to be honest.

I used those exact same words to describe it to a friend. It's better captured even compared to NWN. I mean, you have a "dungeon", there are little groups of monsters each living in a part of the dungeon, kind of like a little eco-system. What seems staid and trite in modern games somehow rings true with this one. And then lethality of the early game.....exactly like a table top game, where a DM throws what they think is a good fight at you and it damn near flattens the whole party.

The only thing that kind of grinds is that same lethality when your goal is killing something like the giant or ogres, or hhuuuuugggeee groups of enemies like the ones for the plot. Like I said, there's no way I would play this Ironman. It'd be hours of grinding random encounters to out-level the monsters so your favorite characters have a chance in hell of surviving. That and sometimes you get handed random encounters that are like "LULZ, PREPARE TO DIE!"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just had one where I had a freaking Ettin and TWO Grizzles start in melee with my party. The Ettin killed most of the part on its turn, cleaving its brains out.

If the game didn't trivialize some stuff, like crafting, it might be more than just the best D&D VG adaption ever. It might be one of the better RPGs made. I laughed and cried when I saw this was a Troika game. Godamnit those guys were amazing game developers, even if their games were always buggy as shit.

If I'm going to get through this in anything less than another year, I either need to start skimming battles, or skipping over some in favor of focusing on the more interesting ones.

Maybe skip any fights where the monsters aren't more numerous than the party.

[Solifuge]

So, I spent a little bit thinking about this, and realize the ways I could have done it differently, which probably would have made this less of an endeavor to update, and more fun for people to read and keep up on. For starters, I'd have liked to have run this a bit more interactively; this thread seemed to handle it pretty well, so I can see that it's doable for a forum RPG thinger. Also, the updates are way too zoomed-in... I'm too long-winded, and tend to want to cover every little thing. This is a decently long game, and I'll never get through it at this rate.

Anyway I'm pondering rebooting this LP from the start (we're not too far), with a bit less narrative, a bit more interaction with readers/players, and smaller, more frequent updates that didn't cover so little story with so many words.

Thoughts? Any votes of interest? I'll be starting a new thread for it, with character creation guidelines and so on, when I get there.

[scriver]

Ah, great, then I can be with you from the beginning
Though, since I'm not in this area of bay12 very often, could you perhaps send me a PM when you start? Or maybe just post in this thread will be easier, as I practically navigate the forum by way of the Updated Topics tab.

[Solifuge]

Okay, the new thread is here. Going to lock this old one. See you there!